‘Rehearsal for Murder – Schenectady Civic Players – 05/08/09

‘Murder’ contains surprises, if not balance
By Michael Eck
Special to The Times Union
SCHENECTADY – Did she jump or was she pushed?
Depends on who you ask, doesn’t it.
The police say Monica Welles committed suicide. Her fiancé, playwright Alex Dennison says she was murdered.
Either way she ended on the street, ten floors down, dead, dead, dead.
Now, a year later, Dennison has reconvened the opening night cast of his comic play “Chamber Music,” with hopes of rehearsing a few scenes from a new play, “Killing Jessica,” a mystery.
Actually, what Dennison hopes is that the play really is the thing wherein he’ll catch the conscience of the King.
Some might remember this plotline from the made-for-TV movie “Rehearsal for Murder,” but for our purposes the play is the thing onstage now at Schenectady Civic Players.
Rita Russell is directing D.D. Brooke’s stage adaptation of “Rehearsal,” and her production is equal parts academic and gently charming.
Welles, played by Monica Cangero, is a film actress hoping to make the shift to Broadway, but she dies following an opening night show and the subsequent party, which shuts down quickly after mixed reviews roll in.
Dennison, played by Robert Lamont Hegeman, is unconvinced – as noted – of her death being a suicide.
But his bit with “Killing Jessica” contains multiple ruses, all of which, of course, funnel into a surprise ending.
Curiously though, there is quite a stretch of denouement following the surprise, during which one keeps waiting for yet another revelation – which fails to show.
The trick to making a mystery is to not telegraph the ending, and Russell succeeds on that front despite the fact that her cast is oddly balanced.
Hegeman, for example, is quite good and onstage literally all the time.
He makes a convincing playwright, perhaps even more so because his period of mourning lasts all of three beats.
Hegeman also makes a good conductor of all the action that follows Monica’s mishap – and Cangero returns in a series of flashbacks, too.
Conversely, some in the cast, like Laural Hayes (as producer Bella Lamb), John Massaroni (as actor Leo Gibbs) and Matthew MacArevey (as a hired cop) lean towards the stiff, almost wooden.
Russell has a tendency to let the script roll and, as in past productions, it doesn’t feel as though she has asked her actors to examine who they are, or why they do the things they do.
Brooke’s characters are stock enough to be played as generics, but this production would offer much more if the people felt real, rather than like actors in a play within a play within a play…